It has become common in the industry of distribution of retail consumer goods to minimize manual labor by using increasingly automated inventory re-supply from a central distribution center to specific retail outlets. For example, as consumers purchase specific retail goods, bar-code scanners and cash registers immediately transmit information of the purchase of those specific retail goods from the retail store to a distribution center that warehouses a wide variety of goods. At the distribution center, the retail store sales information is collected and transmitted to distribution apparatus that selects a re-supply of the specific goods purchased and places the re-supply goods in a shipping container to be shipped with other re-supply goods to the one particular retail store.
Such shipping containers have taken on a fairly common structure in recent years, wherein a hinged lid folds over a rectangular, distribution container, and wherein a base of the container is configured to nest within a closed top of a second container so that the containers are stackable. Such a container is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,452,847 that issued on Sep. 26, 1995. A more recent version that is commonly seen in large chain pharmacy stores, such as “RITE AID, Inc.” is available under the model name “Distribution Container with Hinged Lid” from a company entitled “GLOBAL” through their website www.globalindustrial.com.
These containers simplify distribution by providing containers filled with goods that are appropriate for a particular aisle of the store, and the goods in the containers can be hand placed on shelves by store workers without any need for intermediate storage room wherein traditionally larger sized, palletized freight containers are stored and broken down for distribution from the store room into the aisles and on shelves.
While these containers have such benefits, they also have drawbacks related to automated loading of the containers at the distribution center. Frequently distribution centers utilize laborers to hand-select re-supply goods from wholesale pallets or other such containers and place them into the distribution containers. The laborer typically moves the distribution container along a roller conveyor while selecting goods from a row of wholesale supply containers or pallets aligned adjacent the roller conveyor.
Efforts have been made to automate this procedure of filling a retail distribution container utilizing an automated or robotic picker with a vision capability that is controlled by a computer system typically utilizing a manual operator only for correcting errors, or assuring correct selection and placement of the re-supply goods within the retail distribution containers. It is also common for such automated systems to have the wholesale supply container be a four-sided, open-top container, which may be identical to the retail distribution container.
In such circumstances the vision system of the automated picker can only see into the containers from their open tops, and the pickers must lift an entire weight of the goods out of the wholesale container, move the lifted goods across a distance, such as over a picker conveyor support, and then place the goods into the distribution container through the open top. This requires that the automated picker have substantial grabbing and weight lifting capacity and also have substantial vertical motion capability. When the distribution container arrives at an aisle within a retail store, the goods must also be lifted out of the container through the top and then placed on store shelves. The most prevalent distribution containers also utilize a hinge lid having two half portions that interlock, giving rise to a substantial number of pinched-finger injuries arising from the interlocking mechanism.
Accordingly, there is a need for a distribution container and system of use of the container that overcomes the deficiencies of known distribution container and systems thereof.